A pasture and his flock: Farmer Gene Logsdon ruminates on his luck in the recent floods and what he learned from the drought this year about sheep, weeds, and conventional wisdom. (Organic To Be)

Organic does not mean good for you or the planet: Fortune reporter and blogger Marc Gunther returns from the Natural Products Expo East showcase for organic and natural food, health and beauty products. He’s "feeling a little queasy." (MarcGunther.com)

Going grape in the Midwest: Our previous correspondent Janet at FoodPerson has the skinny on locally grown grapes in Kansas, both the table and the wine kind, while Jennifer aka Baklava Queen invents a delicious-sounding grape and jasmine cake using some "richly sweet" Niagara grapes from her Ohio farmers’ market, at Rolling in the Dough.

Mess with Mother Nature, and you might just make a mess: Barbara outlines what we can learn from frog mutations caused by pesticide runoff. "When humans introduce powerful chemicals into complex ecological systems, it is very nearly impossible to predict all of the consequences. Every action humans take upon an environment causes a ripple effect that changes things far beyond the factors which humans wanted to control in the first place, and these changes may not become apparent until far into the future." Very well said. We eagerly await the publication of USDA studies proving that transgenic corn has absolutely no effect on earthworms, or the birds who eat them, or… (Tigers & Strawberries; thanks Jack)

Come on, guys, you know better than that. Genetic engineering is just a method. The means, not the ends. Now, the genes used, the proteins produced – those have to be looked at individually.

Rail against BT or RoundUp Ready all you want (I’m not a fan of RoundUp myself) but please, don’t be so quick to condemn the whole technology because a few companies have used it unwisely. The anti-GMO sentiment is holding back funding for good research like improving nutrition and drought resistance, but has no effect on the corporations.